Meanwhile: It's more than the food - Opinion - International Herald Tribune

LONDON — A friend took me aback recently by saying he never ate in the evenings with his teenage son.

"We eat downstairs in front of the television. He takes his supper to his room."

"So when do you get to talk?" I asked.

"We don't, much," he replied.

A report on British youth published this week by the Institute for Public Policy Research seems to confirm a pattern. It finds that "just" 64 percent of British 15-year-olds eat regularly with their families, a figure in line with the United States. The authors see this statistic as one of the factors revealing a disconnection between adults and youngsters in Britain, and a contributing cause to youthful bad behavior.

Young people, lacking adult guidance and left to their own devices, learn their behavior outside the home from others of their own age group. This, the report says, is a poor preparation for adult social life.

To us here in Britain, two out of three teenagers eating regularly with their families might appear to be a high percentage. Yet this figure is the lowest in Europe, with the exception of Finland, and compares, for instance, with 93 percent in Italy.

South of the Alps, it seems that "famiglia" and "tavola" - that wonderful word that sums up everything about being "at table" together - continue to have the same social vitality we see in Luchino Visconti's classic 1960 film, "Rocco and His Brothers." An Italian far from his land, asked what he most missed most about home, simply replied "tavola."

Tavola is, of course, not just the food, but the celebration of being together, parents and children, through thick and thin. And it is, above all, conversation. The IPPR's comparative figures for youngsters whose parents spend time "just talking to them" several times a week, correlate closely with the number of those who eat together. Mealtimes and talking go hand in hand. The figures for both tend to be much higher on the Continent than in Britain.

Though two out of three British youngsters say they "eat regularly" with their families, in practice this covers a wide range of scenarios in the home. Does it mean preparing a meal together? Sharing from the same pot? Or each individual heating up a preferred TV dinner in the microwave?

Does it mean having conversation around the table? What if family gatherings are reduced to shouting matches? Maybe it means watching television soap operas in silence while you eat. And does any of this really matter, so long as the family eats together?

Eating together is one of the most civilizing social events in life. It follows that eating with children should bring a socializing influence to their lives, too.

A recent illustration of this was given to me by a teacher in an international school. She took a group of the least sociable new arrivals, all 14-year-olds, on an "away week" where, among other activities, they ate together every day at tables set formally and attractively.

Only two out of the 10 said they ate regularly with their families at home. As a result, most of them seemed rather lost about how to behave together at table.

They started off eating in silence. They showed poor awareness of those social aspects of sharing a common meal: helping ourselves from the same dishes, passing food around, literally breaking bread together.

The teacher put down some guidelines. They should look out for those sitting near them, and pass them food or water, or bread, as needed. Each day they would sit in different places so as to get to talk to different people.

The difference in the children after only a few days was remarkable, she said, and surprised her. The group became a lively interacting bunch of kids, chatting away at every mealtime, and actively looking forward to meals. They had learned, she said, how to participate in the social ritual of eating together.

In Ang Lee's engaging film, "Eat, Drink, Man, Woman," a widowed chef in Taipei who has three unmarried daughters prepares for them every week a huge and elaborate Sunday dinner that is enacted, here too, as a family ritual. As in Visconti's "Rocco," the family meal table becomes a stage where key moments of the family's stories are played out.

So to complete Ang Lee's list - Eat, Drink, Man, Woman - and to close the circle, I would add: Child, Table.

A version of this article appears in print on November 10, 2006, in The International Herald Tribune. Today's Paper|Subscribe